


You Called Her Dot

by follow_the_sun



Series: Team Stegosaurus vs. the Universe [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Civil War Fix-It, M/M, More Pining, Pining, Seriously There Is So Much Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7279456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/follow_the_sun/pseuds/follow_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky doesn’t care if he wins the stuffed bear for a redhead whose name he can’t remember. He’s playing a longer game than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Called Her Dot

**Author's Note:**

> Have placed this in the Team Stegosaurus series for reasons, but it can also be read as a standalone (or completely ignored if angst and pining are not your jam and you were only in it for the dinosaurs).

So here’s a thing that Bucky Barnes can never tell anybody—not his sisters, no matter how much they make fun of him; not his Army buddies later when they swap stories about home; and definitely never, ever, _ever_ Steven Grant Rogers.

The thing is this: it has nothing to do with Dorothy.

Dolores. He means Dolores. Jeez, he’s usually better at this.

“Hey, Dot,” he calls, over his shoulder, “I got a good feeling about this one.” He raises the toy rifle, aims at the moving wooden ducks, pulls the trigger— _bang!_ —and misses. _“Damn_ it,” he says loudly.

“Language, Buck,” Steve says, eyebrows drawing together. “There’s a lady present.”

Bucky carefully maintains his scowl as he turns back to the game. Dot is a nice girl, doesn’t drink or smoke or swear. He had to talk fast to get her to agree to a date with him at all, much less with his third wheel friend along for the ride. “I can do this,” he says, slapping down another dime on the counter.

“Bucky, come on, you’ve spent forty cents already,” Steve says, but Bucky is completely focused on the goal, aiming the little rifle again and— _bang!—_ missing by a mile.

“I’m so sorry about him,” Steve says to the girl, as Bucky mutters under his breath.

“I don’t even _want_ the bear,” says Dot.

“I know.” Steve sighs. “And I thought I was the most stubborn guy in Brooklyn.”

Bucky presses his lips together in a straight line and proceeds to miss with his second shot, and then Steve says, “So, Dolores, Bucky says you like art,” and it’s all he can do to maintain his even expression while he raises the gun again.

It’ll cost him yet another dime to keep shooting if he misses. But this game is worth it.

 

A dollar and eighty cents in, even the damn carnie who’s been taking his money is starting to look at Bucky with an expression of painful embarrassment. When he reaches into his pocket for another dime, the carnie leans over and says, very quietly, “Buddy, you do know the game is rigged, right?”

Bucky meets the stranger’s eyes. “Yeah, pal,” he says softly. “I’m the one who’s rigging it. Now shut your damn mouth and give me three more shots, okay?”

There’s a funhouse mirror across the way, and if he turns his head just right, Bucky can watch Steve, reflected, doing his best to entertain a nice girl while Bucky makes an ass of himself, and Dolly—no, dammit, _Dolores_ —leaning in a little closer while he talks.

Bucky fires, and misses, and Steve mutters something, blushing, and Dot giggles behind her hand.

 

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” Arnie Roth tells him at the St. George, the night before he ships out with the Navy. God bless Arnie; Steve is his best friend and always will be, but with Arnie, he can drop all the masks. Bucky didn’t know, until he was about to lose it, how much he needed there to be one place in the world where he didn’t have to hide. “As long as he thinks he can’t get a dame, there’s still a chance he’ll settle for you.”

Arnie has been joking around like that all evening, trying to cheer him up, as if Bucky was the one shipping out in the morning, not him, and Bucky tries, but he just doesn’t have the heart to return the banter. “I stopped kidding myself about that a long time ago,” he sighs, leaning over to grab the pack of cigarettes from the nightstand. “But I… I want him to have somebody besides me to take care of him, Arnie.” He flicks open his lighter, stares into the flame, and says, very quietly, “I’m not gonna be able to do it forever.”

 

The last time Bucky checks the funhouse mirror, it’s just in time to see Dot grab Steve’s hand and pull him behind one of the carnival booths. He lets out a breath it feels like he’s been holding for a week, and the carnie mistakes it for a huff of anger and starts trying to placate him: “Look, buddy, you were the one who—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bucky says, and then he turns around, picks up the little rifle, and hits three of the ducks in a row, knocking each one over on its moving metal track. “I got my money’s worth,” he says, reaches past the carnie to take the nearest stuffed bear down from its hook, and walks away.

 

Steve is flustered and red when he finds Bucky on a bench beside the midway, and Bucky smirks at him and holds the bear up by its paws. “See?” he says. “Told you I could get it.”

“Um,” Steve says, taking a seat beside him. “Bucky. There’s, uh. There’s something I have to tell you.”

It’s about all Bucky can do not to let his face split into a grin when he sees how proud and guilty Steve is managing to look all at once. “Did you kiss her?”

“No!” Steve says, horrified. “She was your date, Bucky, I’d never do that.”

Bucky gives him a long, measuring look.

 _“She_ kissed _me,”_ Steve admits, and Bucky crows in triumph, grabbing Steve and hugging him so hard that it almost knocks him over.

“See, you little punk, I knew you had it in you. And next time you better kiss her first, dummy. Where is she, anyway?”

“I dunno. She ran into some girlfriends and they took off. Jeez, Buck.” Steve pulls away with all the dignity he can muster. “I thought you’d be mad.”

“I’m furious,” Bucky says. “I’m _livid._ I demand that you buy me a hot dog as punishment. Come on, punk, I’m starving.”

 

It’s not until nearly an hour later that they realize they’ve made a terrible mistake.

“You couldn’t have,” says Steve.

“If I’m lying I’m dying, my friend.”

“Three _dollars,_ Bucky.”

“Two dollars and ninety cents,” Bucky says. “Don’t make it worse than it is.”

“And then you let me spend everything we had left on hot dogs!”

“How was I supposed to know that would wipe you out?” Bucky demands, despite the fact that he really should have. Steve, with his damn pride, insists on paying full rent and board to Winifred Barnes every month, even though he shares a room with Bucky and eats like a bird; between that and doctors and medicine to keep himself alive, plus the art classes that give him a _reason_ to keep himself alive, there’s rarely a time when Steve’s not flat broke.

“Okay.” Steve takes a deep breath and paces a few steps. “Okay. I’m going to figure this out. You wait there and try not to get us in any more trouble until I get back.”

“The trouble’s walking away from me right now, buddy,” Bucky calls after him, trying not to sound as smug as he feels.

He hangs onto the bear. He’ll give it to Minnie, the littlest of his sisters; it’s rare that she has anything that hasn’t been handed down at least once, sometimes twice. And, hell, he spent almost three dollars on the thing, so somebody ought to enjoy it.

For all everybody thinks he’s the charming one of the pair, it’s a remarkably short amount of time before Steve is back, grabbing his arm and hauling him down the boardwalk. “Come on,” he says, “I got us a ride.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Ran into a guy with a truck, told him about my stupid friend losing our train money trying to impress a dame. Big sob story, real Charles Dickens stuff.”

“Well, you are the master of looking pathetic,” Bucky says, as Steve leads him behind a tent. “And anyway, technically, you’re the one who spent the train money. I only spent—” As they round the corner, he stops, and looks, and looks again. “You can’t be serious,” he says. “You want to ride home in _that?”_

“Would you rather walk to Red Hook?”

“Ugh, fine,” Bucky says, with an exaggerated theatrical groan, popping open the door of the refrigerated truck. “Smells like fish in here,” he grumbles, as Steve hops in beside him.

The old man who’s driving the truck comes around to check on them before he shuts the doors. “You boys all right?” he asks, and when they assent, he looks at Bucky and grins toothlessly at Steve. “This is the one that wasted three bucks on the redhead, huh?”

“Sounds dirty when you say it that way,” Bucky says. “Darlene—”

“Dolores,” Steve corrects.

“—is a nice girl, and anyway, it was only two-ninety,” Bucky finishes, which makes the old man laugh uproariously as he closes the doors and starts the truck.

 

Being cold doesn’t bother Bucky much, but it bothers Steve a lot. Twenty minutes into the ride home, he’s hunched into a ball, shivering enough that Bucky can’t take it anymore. He strips off his jacket and drapes it around Steve’s narrow shoulders. “Don’t you dare argue with me, punk,” he says, as Steve opens his mouth to do just that, slinging an arm around Steve and pulling him in close. “Ma will have my hide if I let you catch a cold.”

Steve must really be freezing, or exhausted, or both, because instead of arguing, he accepts the easy intimacy of the gesture and leans all of his slight weight against Bucky. “And what’s she gonna say to me if you do?”

“That it’s my own fault for being stupid,” Bucky says, with a shrug. If the motion happens to nestle Steve closer against his chest, it’s just a happy accident.

Steve laughs. “Well, she’d have a point. Three _dollars_ , Buck. You must really like that girl.”

Bucky sighs. “Nah. To tell you the truth, Stevie, I’m kind of relieved that her necking you gives me an excuse to break it off. She’s real nice and everything, but she ain’t the one.”

“What are you talking about? She’s great. She’s everything you look for in a dame.”

 _Nah, Stevie, she’s everything_ you _look for in a dame. And by the way, your standards are too damn low. You deserve better, especially once I—_

“Stevie,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it, “I think I’m gonna enlist.”

Steve’s body goes stiff. “Why?”

“Because they say the Nazis are killing guys like Arnie Roth, over in Europe,” Bucky says, softly. “Because Mrs. Winkowski hasn’t heard from her sister in Poland in six months. Because even if it wasn’t the right thing to do, once they start up this draft they’re talking about, I’m going one way or another. If I enlist first, maybe I can make officer a little quicker. Hell, maybe I can even get in the 107th, like our dads. I’d like to think my old man would be proud if I did.”

“Guys like Arnie,” Steve says softly, as if he didn’t hear anything after that. “You mean Jews, right?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says miserably. Arnie does happen to be Jewish, but that’s not what he meant. Bucky has never felt like more of a coward than he does in this moment, because if he had any guts at all, he would’ve said, _guys like me_.

He could tell the truth to the draft board, he guesses, if he wanted to. They might either 4F him or stick him in a desk job, and then he’d be safe for the rest of the war. But even if he could do that to his family—because word would get around, he’s not dumb enough to think it wouldn’t—he’s got enough of a reputation as a skirt chaser that they’d probably laugh him out of the recruiting office. Five years he’s spent building up that reputation until it’s rock solid enough to throw off any suspicion, no matter who he’s seen with or what neighborhood he hangs around in, and look at that, his careful acting has bought him just enough rope to hang himself.

“What would you say,” Steve asks, “if I told you I’ve been thinking about enlisting since Arnie did?”

Somehow or other, Bucky manages not to laugh. “They won’t take you,” he says. “You got a heart condition.”

“It’s a _murmur._ They might not even notice. I hear they tell you to bend over, and if nothing falls off, you’re in.”

 _Oh, I bet they’ll notice the asthma,_ Bucky thinks; he can hear the faint wheeze deep down in Steve’s lungs right now. _Bet they’ll notice you’re deaf on one side. Bet they’ll notice you don’t meet the minimum goddamn_ weight _requirement, Stevie, so how about you don’t do this to yourself._ “I’m not so sure,” he begins, but Steve cuts him off.

“I’ve pretty much already made up my mind, Buck. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I just thought… I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about going, and I didn’t want you to feel, you know, obligated to follow me.”

Which shows how dumb Steve is, because God forbid the Army actually took him, there’s no way in hell Bucky wouldn’t be right behind him. “What does it matter what I think? Have I ever stopped you from doing something you wanted to do?”

“No,” Steve says. “You haven’t.” He takes a deep breath. “When do you want to go? Tomorrow night?”

“Gimme a couple days,” Bucky says, looking away. “I gotta tell Ma and the girls. Gonna have to work up to that a little.”

Steve nods in understanding, and they both lapse into silence again, which is good, because it spares him having to tell Steve how badly he’s missing the point. _Want_ to go? Did Steve not hear a word he just said? He _doesn’t_ want to go; he’d give his right arm to have a reason _not_ to go. But everything he said is still true. He’s looked for a loophole and there isn’t one; he’s dead center of the height, weight, and age requirements, no medical problems, no critical job at home. One way or another, Bucky Barnes is going to get drawn into this fight. Sometimes, whether it’s a back-alley brawl or a war, the only way out of it is through. And once you realize that there’s no way to talk your way out of it, the best thing to do is throw yourself into it with everything you’ve got and pray you come out of it whole on the other side.

He should want to do the right thing no matter what it’s gonna cost him, like Stevie does. He knows he should. But he just has this feeling deep in his guts that if he gets on one of those big boats down in the Navy Yard and heads off to fight Hitler, he’s never coming home.

 

Bucky isn’t okay with walking into the Hydra base in Siberia, and he’s going to do it anyway, because this needs to be done. He can actually see Steve realizing that, and searching for some way to help. Apparently, what Steve comes up with is, _lob a good memory at him, give him something to hold onto,_ because he says, “You remember that time we had to ride back from Rockaway Beach in the back of that freezer truck?”

“Was that the time you used our train money to buy hot dogs?” Bucky says, smiling in spite of himself. It’s a better memory for Steve than for him, obviously, but it’s a good memory nonetheless, and he’s still at the point where _any_ memory he can dredge out of his skull is a triumph over Hydra, so there’s that.

“You blew three bucks trying to win that stuffed bear for a redhead,” Steve replies, and the look he gives Bucky—that resigned, affectionate look, that _you’re an idiot and I love you for it_ look—almost breaks him.

 _It was only two-ninety, pal,_ he almost says, but the words stick in his throat. Now that he’s pulled up that memory, he’s almost overwhelmed by it: the feel of the toy rifle in his hands, the taste of the best hot dog he’s ever eaten in his life, the press of Steve’s body against his.

He doesn’t remember the redhead’s name. But he bets Steve remembers the girl Bucky got him his first kiss from—and Steve’s the one who decided to kiss that woman, Sharon, at the airport, which means he’s grown a little confidence since 1939, anyway.

In his darker moments, Bucky likes to hope that taking care of Steve is the one thing in his life he’s actually gotten right.

 

“Are you sure about this?” Steve asks, and Bucky is sure.

“I can’t trust my own mind,” he says. “So, until they figure out how to get this stuff out of my head, I think going back under is the best thing for everyone.”

Steve is doing it again, that long, desperate look. Wanting to help, and there not really being anything he can do; no jerk he can yell at, no bully he can punch. “Hey,” he finally says, putting his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Do something for me, Buck.”

 _Anything._ “What?”

“Think about something good when they’re putting you under,” Steve says. “I want… I want you to have good dreams.”

Bucky lets out a breath, not quite a laugh. “It doesn’t really work like that, Steve.”

“Just try,” Steve says softly. “And tell me what it is, so I can think about it too.”

“Okay,” Bucky says.

Seventy years and Steve has almost died for him three distinct times over. He’s not going to run screaming from a little bit of the truth.

 

Steve must have really played up the sob story, because the truck driver takes them practically right up to the door of their building. Bucky won’t realize they’ve been given that much kindness until the doors open, but he knows when the truck is slowing down, and when it’s pulling over. Steve is fast asleep, curled up tight against him with his head on Bucky’s chest. “Hey,” he says, “hey, Stevie, wake up,” and Steve stirs, but doesn’t open his eyes. “Hey,” Bucky says again, and then—

It’s a moment of weakness, and he promises himself that it’s the only one he’ll ever allow (a promise he keeps until 2016, when he breaks it by telling this very story to Steve). He leans down and presses his lips to Steve’s temple, softly, gently: a lover’s kiss.

Then he says, “Stevie, come on,” and shakes him awake, less gently than he wants to, before the driver can come around and open the doors.

 _“Look at his face,”_ Jim Morita will tell Gabe Jones, a couple of years from now, somewhere in Normandy, when he and Steve tell this story to the Howling Commandos, falling over each other with interruptions and arguments about who exactly spent the train money and how it wasn’t three dollars, it was only two-ninety. _“That girl must have been a real bombshell. He’s practically glowing just thinking about her.”_ And Bucky won’t be able to tell him, or any of them, that he can’t even remember her name.

This, though. He doesn’t know it yet, but Steve, warm and solid and real—this is the part he’ll carry with him down into the darkness, and the thing that will be waiting to draw him out of it on the other side.

 

“You never said anything,” Steve says, so softly that he almost doesn’t hear.

“No,” Bucky says, unnecessarily, because what else is there to say, really? The secret is out, now. _He’s_ out, now. And it doesn’t feel as good as he thought it would.

“I remember that night,” Steve says. “I remember you said the Nazis were killing guys like Arnie Roth. When you said, guys like him—”

Bucky looks at him sidelong, nervous. “Yeah. I meant…”

“I thought,” Steve says, in a voice lower than a whisper, “I thought maybe you meant guys like _me._ For a minute there, Buck, I was terrified, thinking you knew how I felt about you.”

Bucky turns. Everything about his body is different now, without the weight of the arm that he’s learned, way down in his muscles, to account for with every motion; he feels _wrong_ all the time, constantly off-balance, and this feels like the thing that might finally make him fall. “I… I don’t understand,” he says. “You… When that girl kissed you, you remember, Donna—”

“Dolores?” Steve asks, with a faint smile.

“Yeah. You seemed, I mean… I thought you were into it.”

“Is that how the kids say it now?”

“And then, in Germany, at the airport, Sharon…”

“I like Sharon,” Steve says. “I respect Sharon. I’d go to the mat for her any time, even if I didn’t owe her for all her help, because she’s one of the best people I know. So I thought maybe… And then I turned around and you had the same look on your face as when I came back from kissing Dolores… and as when you first saw me with Peggy, right after Azzano. You were pretending to be happy, but your eyes were so _sad._ And I can’t believe it took me this long to realize, Buck, but when you used to go out with a different girl every week, and I thought it was just a matter of time until you picked one to settle down with—that was the same look I used to be so careful about hiding from you.”

Bucky is dumbstruck, but Steve takes his silence as something that needs to be filled, and says, too quickly, “Bucky, this whole fight, I… I kept telling myself I was doing it because it was the right thing, protecting you. I see now that it was the selfish thing. But I’m not sorry I did it, any of it. Because at the end of it, I still had you.”

Bucky doesn’t even realize he’s moved until he’s already brought his right hand up to cup Steve’s cheek, and both of Steve’s arms go around him. Steve’s body is nothing like it used to be, strong and warm where it used to be light and frail, but neither is his—hell, he used to have two good arms to drag Steve out of fights with and prop him up against and protect him with, and now, for the first time, he’s trying to get used to not having the one he really lost seventy years ago—and it’s clear that Steve cares about that exactly zero.

He doesn’t know which of them starts the kiss, but it doesn’t matter. It’s long, and slow, and it doesn’t feel like sinking, or fading, or losing himself. It just feels like the thing he’s been waiting for his whole life, the piece he didn’t know he was missing finally slotting into place.

It doesn’t change the fact that cryo is the right thing to do, just like the Army was. It doesn’t change what has to happen next. But when Steve says, “Bucky, I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise,” it doesn’t feel like leaving. For once, it feels like Bucky is finally coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to robyngoodfellow for the beta!
> 
> Here, Marvel, I fixed that thing for you where you keep trying to convince us that Steve and Bucky are totally straight platonic bros and it doesn't work at all. (Also, Sharon Carter deserves better than all that awkwardness.)
> 
> My heart is warmed by the fact that Dot, who we never saw onscreen, already has an AO3 character tag.
> 
> [The Tumblr post for this fic is [here](http://follow-the-sun-fanfic.tumblr.com/post/146675785025/you-called-her-dot-followthesun-captain).]


End file.
